Publications by authors named "Damaris K Kinyoki"

Article Synopsis
  • Oral rehydration solution (ORS) is vital for preventing childhood deaths due to severe diarrhea, but its adoption varies across countries like Senegal, Mali, and Sierra Leone.
  • A study using advanced statistical modeling showed that while ORS usage increased in certain areas, it often replaced home-made alternatives, except in some regions negatively affected by factors like the Ebola outbreak.
  • The findings indicate that many children, particularly in parts of Mali and Senegal, are still not receiving adequate treatment, highlighting the need for better messaging and access to ORS to reduce child mortality.
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Background: HIV remains the largest cause of disease burden among men and women of reproductive age in sub-Saharan Africa. Voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) reduces the risk of female-to-male transmission of HIV by 50-60%. The World Health Organization (WHO) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) identified 14 priority countries for VMMC campaigns and set a coverage goal of 80% for men ages 15-49.

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Since 2000, many countries have achieved considerable success in improving child survival, but localized progress remains unclear. To inform efforts towards United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3.2-to end preventable child deaths by 2030-we need consistently estimated data at the subnational level regarding child mortality rates and trends.

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Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF)-giving infants only breast-milk (and medications, oral rehydration salts and vitamins as needed) with no additional food or drink for their first six months of life-is one of the most effective strategies for preventing child mortality. Despite these advantages, only 37% of infants under 6 months of age in Africa were exclusively breastfed in 2017, and the practice of EBF varies by population. Here, we present a fine-scale geospatial analysis of EBF prevalence and trends in 49 African countries from 2000-2017, providing policy-relevant administrative- and national-level estimates.

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Background: The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 provided comprehensive estimates of health loss globally. Decision makers in Kenya can use GBD subnational data to target health interventions and address county-level variation in the burden of disease.

Methods: We used GBD 2016 estimates of life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, all-cause and cause-specific mortality, years of life lost, years lived with disability, disability-adjusted life-years, and risk factors to analyse health by age and sex at the national and county levels in Kenya from 1990 to 2016.

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Background: Malnutrition and malaria are both significant causes of morbidity and mortality in African children. However, the extent of their spatial comorbidity remains unexplored and an understanding of their spatial correlation structure would inform improvement of integrated interventions. We aimed to determine the spatial correlation between both wasting and low mid upper arm circumference (MUAC) and falciparum malaria among Somalian children aged 6-59 months.

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Insufficient growth during childhood is associated with poor health outcomes and an increased risk of death. Between 2000 and 2015, nearly all African countries demonstrated improvements for children under 5 years old for stunting, wasting, and underweight, the core components of child growth failure. Here we show that striking subnational heterogeneity in levels and trends of child growth remains.

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Introduction: In Somalia, protracted conflict and drought have caused population displacement and livelihood destruction. There is also widespread childhood undernutrition. We aimed to determine the independent effects of conflict on wasting and stunting among children aged 6-59 months nationwide in Somalia.

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The aim of this study was to assess spatial co-occurrence of acute respiratory infections (ARI), diarrhoea and stunting among children of the age between 6 and 59 months in Somalia. Data were obtained from routine biannual nutrition surveys conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization 2007-2010. A Bayesian hierarchical geostatistical shared component model was fitted to the residual spatial components of the three health conditions.

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Article Synopsis
  • Stunting in children under five in Somalia has significant long-term consequences on development, so it's crucial to accurately assess its prevalence and identify risk factors.
  • A Bayesian hierarchical space-time model was created using data from 2007 to 2010, analyzing over 73,700 children, which linked stunting rates to environmental factors like rainfall and vegetation cover for forecasting.
  • Findings showed that rainfall and vegetation significantly influenced stunting rates, with forecasting models yielding less than a 3% difference in estimates across regions, highlighting the importance of these environmental factors in planning nutritional interventions.
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Objective: Wasting and stunting may occur together at the individual child level; however, their shared geographic distribution and correlates remain unexplored. Understanding shared and separate correlates may inform interventions. We aimed to assess the spatial codistribution of wasting, stunting and underweight and investigate their shared correlates among children aged 6-59 months in Somalia.

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Objective: To determine the sub-national seasonal prevalence and trends in wasting from 2007 to 2010 among children aged 6-59 months in Somalia using remote sensing and household survey data from nutritional surveys.

Methods: Bayesian hierarchical space-time model was implemented using a stochastic partial differential equation (SPDE) approach in integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA) to produce risk maps of wasting at 1 × 1 km(2) spatial resolution and predict to seasons in each year of study from 2007 to 2010.

Results: The prevalence of wasting was generally at critical levels throughout the country, with most of the areas remaining in the upper classes of critical and very critical levels.

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Objective: To investigate the predictors of wasting, stunting and low mid-upper arm circumference among children aged 6-59 months in Somalia using data from household cross-sectional surveys from 2007 to 2010 in order to help inform better targeting of nutritional interventions.

Design: Cross-sectional nutritional assessment surveys using structured interviews were conducted among communities in Somalia each year from 2007 to 2010. A two-stage cluster sampling methodology was used to select children aged 6-59 months from households across three livelihood zones (pastoral, agro-pastoral and riverine).

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Background: Over a decade ago, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership was launched, and since then there has been unprecedented investment in malaria control. We examined the change in malaria transmission intensity during the period 2000-10 in Africa.

Methods: We assembled a geocoded and community Plasmodium falciparum parasite rate standardised to the age group 2-10 years (PfPR2-10) database from across 49 endemic countries and territories in Africa from surveys undertaken since 1980.

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